In the morning, later than we perhaps should have done, we dinghied east to the thin neck of land to walk the beach. We headed south towards the club foot shaped end of the land. There were a number of idyllic looking private beach homes – not the expensive kind but rough wooden sort – owned by locals. It all looked like a little piece of paradise.
There were a number of dogs that seemed to live in the area and we ended up being accompanied by two of them. From time to time they would go bounding into the water chasing fish. Interestingly, both on occasion would turn over small rocks to look underneath – quite interesting behavior.
As we rounded the end of the land the comfortable sand turned into volcanic rock. One of the dogs would wince every now and then, presumably when it trod on something sharp and uncomfortable, but still stayed with us. Eventually we made it all the way round to the windward side where there was no separation between us and the deeper sea. Quite different from the inside.
We found a rarely used jungle 4×4 trail at about the right point to head back across the narrow strip of land. Walking along this trail we felt as if we’d transported to somewhere completely different as the flora was quite unlike what we’d got used to – hardly a palm tree in sight.
The dense foliage eventually opened up into a small road-less group of houses which backed onto the beach close to where we’d left the dinghy. The dogs, back in familiar territory, plunged into the water full of excitement and eager, it seemed, to catch fish. We never saw them being successful at this but the were quite keen to try.
Ben and I left Helen on the boat and dinghied over to a section of deep water to see if it was worth taking the hookah over later. We deemed it worth a go and headed back to the boat for lunch.
After a rest we motored Dignity over and anchored just off the edge of the deep water so we could deploy the hookah off the back of the boat. The water ended up a lot murkier than we expected and Helen headed back early on. Ben and I stayed around in the water for an hour. The deepest we went was 60ft where the air supply began to be a little laboured. We had the spear guns with us but could not find any large edible fish to shoot so the little ones ended up having to be careful.
Back aboard we moved Dignity back to the general area we were before but nearer to Sea Mist as we had a sun downer date with them. At 5:30 we went over there and ended up drinking a little too much. We left after 10pm which was very late for all of us. Ben and I ended up staying up until after midnight mainly stargazing with the binoculars and chatting.
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